I have come to the conclusion that I’m not made for the 9-5, early bird gets the worm lifestyle. I absolutely love my job, I do, but the schedule is starting to kill my soul. Everyone I work with is an early riser and they are just full of energy when they hit the door. But those daily 9 am standups are pure torture for me. And while I love the people I work with, their early morning perkiness is difficult to swallow. How can I become a morning person?

Every day I tell myself I'm going to wake up at 6 AM, every day I wake up at 9 AM. And I start work at 9 AM 😆 I don't think you need to stress yourself out about being an early morning person. I think you can embrace your true nature and just accept the fact that you're not a morning person, and that's okay. Standups are only a couple of minutes, at least where I work, I think you can fake it and just continue on with your day after.

Go to bed earlier. There's no magical cure for this other than getting adequate sleep the night before. I'm a night owl by nature and it's been taking a toll, so I've finally started trying to get to sleep by 11. Not easy, but I've found that working out daily and walking as much as possible helps tire me out to the point I can actually fall asleep before midnight.

Where are you based? If you happen to be East Coast, taking a remote job that runs on West Coast time could be a quick fix.

What time are you getting to bed at night/how much sleep are you getting? Getting your sleep schedule locked down is key to waking up early and becoming a "morning" person

Take a couple of dopamine tablets the second you get up. It helps. You can find it on Amazon.
Most non-morning people are actually neurodivergent and you’ll be shocked at how much that helps you. It was a total lifesaver for me.
I tried going to bed early. I tried routine. I tried everything that is literally the only thing that saved me. 

Lots of good comments, some good, some bad. Don't take pills or anything, that artificially modifies your dopamine and mental endocrine systems; your body decreases natural production to bring you back into balance - the eventual let-down looks like depression until your body adjusts back to normal. Don't do that to yourself.

Use sunlight / red light early in the morning. Allow your window to be open for the sunrise - it naturally wakes you up and changes your circadian rhythm/pattern. If your room doesn't allow you to have natural sunlight to wake you, set an alarm and watch the sunrise. The other alternative is harder - get up early enough to make yourself tired enough to go to bed earlier. When you get up early, start exercising almost immediately to kick-start your metabolism. Eat protein for breakfast, eggs or something. Essentially force a change. Needs to be sufficiently early and repeated. Some experts suggested 5 am., exercise, complete a task, etc. Do what works for you - just go to bed early enough to get sufficient sleep. The idea is to start your day with a 'win' - against yourself, your fatigue/body, to-do list, the clock, whatever... just get a 'win' against something. Make it a habit. Change is possible, you can be a strong morning person. Just decide and act on it.

You don't become a morning person. You become the person that jogs in the middle of the day on your lunch break and everyone works around your schedule. Let me explain.

Years ago I worked with a client that had a very chill and laid back development team. One of them was a bit of a health nut. She didn't exercise before or after work. She exercised in the middle of the day and often it was inconvenient for others. But she was brilliantly talented and otherwise a pleasure to be around. She demanded one non-negotiable luxury, yes, even at the expense of being annoying or inconvenient because, well, her skills and experience allowed her to.

If you're not a morning person, you're not a morning person. But you either adapt to other's 9 am standup needs....or become the person that forces that meeting to either start later or the person that reads the recap later and keeps up without being present. It's a risk, a gamble, to think this way. But without risks there are no rewards. Your call if it's worth taking the risk or if you'll look for ways to become a morning person.

After having read Why We Sleep, I’ve come to the conclusion that the world is built for and around early risers and I single handedly cannot solve for my night-owl-ness. It’s unfair but that’s how the world works. Lots of things are unfair to a lot of people. I load up on coffee and have introduced rituals that make me look forward to those pesky early morning calls

I agree with the other comments about getting adequate sleep. If you have a busy nighttime routine you should try to change it so that you are going to sleep earlier.

1-go to bed early and this will help you get up earlier. It will take2-4 weeks to adjust to the routine.
2-prepare your standup notes the day before, say 5pm. Standup meetings are standard in agile PM but they should only take you 5 minutes.
3-coffee always helps me but you should also consider having protein for breakfast.
4- if your industry is remote, look for a job a time zone or two to the west of you. (The other options should be preferable).

Look, as much as people may say that you need to go to bed earlier, everyone is wired their own way when it comes to sleep schedules. It makes sense if you think about it in the context of the small groups humans evolved for: someone needed to be up to watch out at night and keep the fire going.

Don't guilt yourself for being a night owl. The best you can do is try to get to bed early and if you keep it up you might shift your schedule. In an ideal world we'd all be able to find a job that enabled us to be our most productive, not fit to a schedule that works for some. Besides, in my experience most those early birds spend all their time an energy doing the performance of work, not actual work.

I am NOT a morning person and my sleep clock drifts later and later. Getting up in the morning is not easy, but I found some tips and tricks. First of all, start off to bed at 10pm. Find a natural sleep aid such as melatonin or Valarian and take it at 10 so you start to get sleepy. This will help you rise earlier.

That's one think I love about my job. It's only early mornings for tax season. Then it's 10am or later.

is it necessary? Can your team use your late start orientation to cover more hours?

I also struggle. I find it takes me several hours to fully wake up. I've started going to the gym early, like 6:30-7am and it wakes me so that I am feeling great by 9am. I do also go to bed earlier, like at 9-10. It's definitely not my normal cycle, but I'm trying.

I recommend you read "The 5am Club by Robin Sharma." You'll be glad you did!!!

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned that the early riser energy is also a work culture thing. I used to work at an in office job where people are not giddy or energetic in the morning, like normal human beings can be lol I’ve also been in the opposite in office similar to OP where everyone is always “happy” to be there even in the morning, chatting it up, etc. and to me it’s just come off as fake work politics/culture in my experience.

Adaptogens have become a game changer for me Ryze has a a hot cocoa that has gut and calming adaptogens. There’s other brands as well this just happened to be the first one I tried and liked. And I’ve stopped espresso after 12 if I need a pick me up after that I go for matcha which I don’t enjoy as much as a latte but the impact on my body is better so

Is this onsite? I have several 0630-0700 meetings weekly, and an 0600 this week. Despite RTO, I'll tend to do these from home. Not wearing pants since we're adults and don't turn on cameras. Going to bed no later than 1030PM helps. My first job in the industry was swing shift. Then I went, in one weekend of moving to another state, to a start up role where I had to be onsite at 0700 by the 2nd week to align with skilled labor. That was a tough adjustment.

Don't drink any caffeine 8 hours before you go to bed. Sometimes the hardest part of waking up is getting yourself out of bed so see if you can just negotiate with yourself to get up early and do your 5 step morning routine (wash face, brush teeth, make coffee, etc ..) and then let yourself lay back down if needed